Some data breaches are baffling – June’s US government personnel database, for instance, or Ashley Madison, which trades on illicit liaisons but can’t keep its own secrets safe. Carphone Warehouse, on the other hand, not so much. When the data watchdog warned that as many as 2.4 million customers might have had their details snatched from the company’s server, the immediate response was surprise that they actually had a server.
Perhaps it’s the name – Carphone Warehouse, so steeped in the 1980s that it’s practically smeared in fake tan. Given that actually using a phone while driving a car has been illegal since 2003, you assume it’s an awkward legacy from a lazy boardroom. But no. In 2014, when the company’s £3.8bn merger with Dixons was announced, they chose the corporate portmanteau Dixons Carphone. Chief exec Graham Stapleton called it the most recognised brand in the business, despite pitching the merged company as a cutting edge “internet of things” retailer.
“High-street stores these days are trying to balance the customers they have sold to, the customers they want to sell to and the customers yet to come,” explains David Godber, chief executive of brand design consultancy Elmwood. “Carphone still has resonance with the grey market although as Generation Y can’t afford cars and use smartphones on bikes I’d expect them to phase it out over the next 20 years.”
The company isn’t the only not-cool-enough-to-be-vintage brand around. American Express sticks to its horsebound messenger moniker despite being literally no faster at all than its rivals at the cash register and – since it’s not accepted by Ikea and B&Q – technically being the bank holiday’s most delaying credit card.
Anachronistic names aren’t necessarily corporate death – otherwise Facebook and Scottish Widows would be in more trouble than they are. Branding experts insist that merely updating the name – to Facesite, Grumpy Baby Boomers or Reasonably Sized Smartphone Shop – is never the solution.
The simplest move, as practised by Martin Sorrell’s Wire Paper Products and the tech consultancy International Business Machines, is to reduce the name to snazzy sounding initials and hope people forget. Yellow Pages, on the other hand, switched from sepia-tinted fly-fishing TV ads to the aggressively needy Yell.com. I just wanted a number … no need to shout.
Of course it’s easy to snipe. We asked businessnamegenerator.com to offer a few up-to-date alternatives. The results were a partial success. Inputting “internet” and “things” produced an astonishing 32,515 business name ideas. Some had zing – what’s not to like about Rex Net Venture? After that, however, things tailed off a little with the upbeat but limited Max Things, the entirely irrelevant Guava Belongings and the alarming Internet Frig. Perhaps they should keep Carphone a little longer.
